The only Elf in all of Beleriand with any sense
by CimentSemantique
Summary: Mablung looks at his life. Mablung looks at his choices. Be warned that the writer thinks there is something very fishy about the nature of Thingol and Melian's relationship and that this is reflected in the way Mablung is written.
1. Chapter 1

The High-king of the Exiles is dead.

This is not a rare event; the Exiles are exceptionally good at getting their leaders killed. They are warriors, without a doubt. They are valorous, perhaps - or very, very angry. Whatever quality it is, none in Doriath is sure of it.

And this may be why Doriath is still proud and strong while the tall warriors from beyond the Sea are aggrieved and wandering, the guardsmen giggle amongst themselves. Doriath has only ever had one king, and that king has only ever had one queen (if the rumors are true, this was not the case with the Exiles before their exile), and only one heir.

_Is that why they have so many children_, Mablung wonders. _Is it to mitigate their habit of being slaughtered? In anticipation of it, even?_

In the distance a voice rises, and the desolation carried in it outdoes all the desolation of the corpse-ridden field. A tall Exile is slumped on the ground, back bowed as if to shield something from sight. His hair, red as the dawn before a storm, is dark with dirt, and the dirt around him is red with blood. Something like silver glitters feebly at his knee.

The Exiles do not often weep. Mablung is transfixed.

Beleg has trudged his way across the field to his side and eyes his arm with concern, but says nothing until Mablung has turned to face him.

"I saw the blow," he says, fingers not quite brushing Mablung's shoulder, "How is it?"

Mablung lets his gaze wander from Beleg's eyes to the red-brown wound that mars the sheen of his silvery locks. He does not look back to the howling exile.

"I'll live," he murmurs.


	2. Chapter 2

Beleg is pale of face and grey of hair, and his eyes are like leaves in the night. He is soft-mannered, also; even of temper and gentle of voice. They say he is kin to Elmo, but no one is sure, and he has never said anything on the matter. Mablung, who has fiery eyes and his mother's dark complexion, has never had a wanner friend, nor a better one.

The Exiles call them Lórienon and Vásion when they think they are out of earshot, for the sunlight shines through Beleg's skin as if through a ghost, and in Mablung's eyes as if it came out of them. And when Beleg speaks it is as if the sound of a babbling brook has been carried by a summer breeze, and when Mablung speaks it is with the heaviness of the air before the thunder, and his eyes flash orange and green.

Beleg is forgiving. Mablung remembers.

And when Beleg returns from seeking that idiot Edain and his band of outlaws, Mablung knows the stiffness in his gait for what it is. But Beleg says nothing.

And when they return from scouting and the spiders are hungry and the dragon is come, Mablung stares stone-jawed at the bruises on Beleg's moonbeam-begotten face. Always the face.

But Beleg says nothing.

And when the wound in Beleg's belly is from Anglachel, it is all Mablung can do to keep from breaking his own fist against a tree.

And when that idiot Edain and his poor fair sister are dead, and the dragon slain, and the outlaws in chaos, Mablung passes through the forest at night and the moon will never shine in quite the same way again.

And Beleg has nothing more to say.


	3. Chapter 3

It's in his eyes. The king loves the queen in all evidence, and she loves him with a passion that will be sung of in legends until the end of all things. Even the looks he gives her are loving, and the smiles when she whispers in his ear genuine. But there is something there in those pupils just a little too wide that Mablung sees in the eyes of wounded animals sometimes: a fear. An anger. A sorrow they cannot quite understand.

And they bite, those animals, in their fear and anger. Not the thing that has wounded them, for it is beyond their reach, but they bite. Anything that comes near, anything they can.

Thingol's eyes are biting eyes.

Melian's eyes are empty.

Oh, there is a light in them, certainly. There is light all through that face, so impossibly fair. But behind the light there is nothing, it seems, save something Mablung thinks might be hunger. It is a fire, Melian's light, that hides among coals.

Mablung cannot look into those eyes. He feels them, when he is in Menegroth - grey and black, biting and burning. He focuses on the tips of their noses when he must speak to them. If he looks his queen in the eyes, she will know, and those fires will come for him.

He has whispered this to Beleg in the long evenings where they are beyond the Girdle, but Beleg does not understand. Beleg loves his queen. Beleg thinks Mablung mad sometimes, Mablung thinks.

And perhaps Mablung is mad - mad for resenting that fire that guards the borders of Doriath, mad for assuming horrors about his beloved king and queen. When he wakes, jaw aching, from dreams of a vague dark-framed white flame, he wonders if Daeron has similar dreams about the princess. Daeron is a little mad, he knows.

But he would wager that Daeron's dreams have eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

Mablung curses many things under his breath, and the harboring of Morwen's kin is not the least of these. Thingol could have chosen to protect any number of dispossessed strangers, but it the dark lady and her ill-fated brood who have made their way into Doriath. The golden-haired child is inoffensive, and the mother of sensible through aloof disposition, but the son, ah! the son. Of ill fate, indeed, and of ill temper. Both mother and son are somber and fair, but where Morwen is wise Túrin is vicious. It is not his age: Nienor is delightful, and their cousin Tuor is patient. No: 'tis Túrin who has poor character. None other in that family allows themselves to be so carried by their rage. Perhaps the forest air does not agree with him, though Mablung finds such a creature dubious.

His eyes are grey, the Elf-man's, but there is a cloudiness to them as if the mountain sky before a storm were reflected there. Mablung does not know if this is some product of his lineage, or if it is a manifestation of his spirit.

Mablung, though suspicious by nature, is not a good judge of character. Clearly there must be some redeeming quality to him, since Beleg Moon-child thinks highly enough of him. Maybe Beleg is not a great judge of character, either.

To Túrin's credit, he is loyal where he feels loyalty is due. He does not give it readily, but when he does he gives it fast. It may well be a lack of critical thinking on his part, but, then, he must sleep better at night for it. After all Mablung knows has befallen him, he is hard-pressed to truly fault him for it.

Mablung seldom rests easy.

Saeros does, now, but that is because he has stumbled upon Túrin's greatest flaw. Mablung feels his jaw loosen, but barely. Saeros should have known. Saeros must have known.

Surely.


	5. Chapter 5

Daeron is lovesick and disingenuous, but he has a good eye for beauty: Lúthien is, without question, one of the fairest creatures ever to flit about the earth. Mablung sits and listens to Daeron's music sometimes, and hears the tread of her feet in it. Before Lúthien was Lúthien and Daeron wandered the halls singing in his high clear voice, she was not in his voice. But now she is - in his voice and his eyes and his grin. She has been for an agonizingly long time now.

Even Beleg, whose eyes are still wide and loving after years of watch and wear, thins his mouth at this. As sure as Celeborn and his Exile paramour are in love is Lúthien completely disinterested in Daeron. They are close, certainly, and she has a love for him, but it is not the same love as he has for her. Her love, Mablung thinks for a long time, is reserved for the stars. She would not sing to them so if it were not.

When Beren, first in a long line of unbidden intruders, stumbles into Doriath, Mablung feels the jealous cry of the stars above, but sees new ones glimmer in his lady's eyes. He is surprised, but only dimly; long has it been since Lúthien was a child, and if this love is not meant to pass then all the hopes in the world are for naught.

Daeron, true to form, disagrees.

Thingol, who has over the years become so different from the curious Elf he was at Cuiviénen, has gone mad, Mablung thinks. He is still king, but he is mad.

The Edain's breath is ragged and his hand shakes so much Mablung fears the Exiles' accursed stone may crush it. It does not, and when Beren raises it into the air with a shout of triumph Mablung does not know what he feels.

When not long after he watches over Lúthien's funeral rites he knows it is the grinding of his teeth, harder than ever, that he feels; and the lump in his throat is as the Silmaril burning balefully away in his beloved home.


	6. Chapter 6

Mablung thinks he has broken a tooth from clenching his jaw since before he had memory. In the part of his mind that is not racing, he is amazed it has taken this long.

He is not sure it matters.

The Girdle is lifted and with every step he takes he repeats it over under his breath: _the Girdle is lifted._

Years of living in the most beautiful realm in Beleriand. Centuries of scouting its borders to ensure its safety. Millenia of standing watch over a kingdom with a mad king and a stone queen, and of never breathing a word of malcontent for fear that he bring doom upon himself, of never sharing his unease with anyone save quiet, kind-hearted Beleg for fear that he bring his people to ruin. And now, because of Thingol's irrational love of things to which he knew full well he had no right, Doriath is aflame.

Melian, heartbroken, has fled, and with every blow he deals Mablung curses her. What right had she to rule! What audacity took her that she would reign for so long, only to abandon them when they most needed her.

(The will of Eru, perhaps? Some ineffable doom to which they had always been assigned? Mablung growls.)

His restrain was in vain, and with every breath he takes he curses himself for never acting on the suspicious he had, for not voicing his skepticism, for letting fate run its course. Thingol had been haughty and greedy, and never had he been challenged, and Doriath is to fall after him.

Mablung spits out chips of tooth, his blows falling lighter. He thinks of starlight through the leaves of summer, and moonlight on moss. He closes his eyes.


End file.
